Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The war of 1812 again, monster style., July 11, 2002
Two groups of sea creatures the Monch, and Agier have desided to rage war. And they have chosen the waters of Sunnydale as their battleground. Buffy and Co. are in full book mode when people of the town, start becoming sea creatures. Oupon further investgation Buffy has a feeling that solving the problome won't be as simple as just killing Monch, and Agier. However Quiten Travers and the Concill feel it is that simple. When the Slayer refuses to work with them, due to past history. Quiten makes a big mess. Even Bigger! By enlisting the help of Faith. What is the Watchers real intrest in this? Can Buffy figue out who the good guys, and bad guys are? Who will win the monster war of 20002? And what will Faith bring to the table? To find out read the book.
Golden did a fine job with this one. The book did get off to a slow start but once I got to chapter four I was hooked. Dawn semmed somewhat off, but everyone else was spot on. The backstory on the sea monsters was very intresting. The scences were Buffy was at the funny farm were eriee. Goldrn did a fine job of putting Faith on the page. Although I think Nacy Holder and Jeff Meraitte did better with her in Unseen. But a fine job nonetheless. Can't wait for Golden's Buffy Angel crossover novel Monster Island in the spring.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Creature from the Sunnydale Lagoon, July 5, 2002
Christopher Golden is hit and miss, but when he hits, he hits big.Sunnydale's beaches are cluttered with sea lions, seeking refuge from something disturbing their natural oceanic habitat. The local fishing community, Docktown, is besieged by people transforming into homicidal fish-men, and numerous trawlers are coming back devoid of their crews. Things are so bad, even the vampires have left town - all but Spike, who smells something fishily familiar in these goings-on from his centuries of world travels. The Watcher's Council has sent representatives to Sunnydale, and so has one of its longstanding rival factions, the Order of Sages. Buffy, who isn't feeling terribly cooperative toward the Council, is excluded from their investigation in favor of a more cooperative Slayer - Faith, who they spring from prison on special dispensation. It isn't long before Buffy discovers that there isn't an aquatic menace at work - there are two. A Lovecraftian civil war, of sorts, is in progress, and Sunnydale is caught in the middle of it. Worse, the Watcher's Council knows more about it all than they're letting on, and their hidden agenda may well be the deciding factor in whether or not there is a world left for humanity to live on, after the Old Ones are through rocking and rolling over it. Golden's plotting and pacing are perfect on this one. He understands the characters extremely well, and does a fine job mixing them together. Dawn is mostly in the background, and Spike's involvement is kept to what knowledge he can contribute toward dealing with the humanoids from the deep. Quentin Travers, the manipulative Council bureaucrat responsible for many of the past woes of Buffy, Giles and Faith, has a part to play. Several new and interesting - and hopefully recurring - peripheral characters are introduced. Most rewarding is Golden's treatment of Faith, which is soul-searching and perceptive. He manages to redeem the rogue Slayer, without losing credibility or becoming sappily sentimental. Past problems she has with Buffy and her friends are not simply forgiven and forgotten, but believably worked through. Lovecraft readers will enjoy this entry as much as Buffy fans. Golden provides several clever in-joke references for that readership, all of which are subtle enough that those not into the Cthulhu Mythos will not notice or be bothered by them. This is not only Golden's best title in the series, but one of the best titles in the series, period. It's just a big, beautiful, sprawling, end-of-the-world Buffy epic. Go fish!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Golden brings Lovecraftian horrors into the Buffy universe, August 1, 2002
It sure will be nice when a "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" original novel based on the hit TV series created by Joss Whedon comes out and does not have some glaring error on one of the covers. This time around the front cover asks the big question "What happens when the white hats practice black magick?" Good question and an interesting premise for a "BtVS" novel, but it has nothing to do with this one. Of course, if the central theme was a wicca turning to the dark side then we would probably see a picture of them on the front cover, but neither Willow nor Tara is to be found.The back cover makes reference to the "Creature from the Black Lagoon's less attractive cousin," which is still off base but in the general ballpark. This is because Christopher Golden is not simply doing some riff off of tacky 1950s black & white science fiction movies this time around. Golden is going for one of the mother lodes of supernatural horror in American literature, namely the work of H. P. Lovecraft (I kept waiting for somebody to quote the "Necromonican" at some point in this novel). Even if "The Wisdom of War" fails to explicitly merge with the Cthulhu Mythos, Golden's epic battle involving eldritch forces is certainly in the spirit of Lovecraft's best work ("At the Mountains of Madness" was always my personal favorite). Golden achieves an almost perfect sense of pacing to the story this time around. This is a 400-page novel and we never get the sense he is rushing the story or throwing in too many details. If anything, Golden takes his time, a point that is best evidenced by the little narratives he builds around each of the victims in the story. He also does a nice job of establishing the mood, building a sense of disquiet from the fact that the beaches of Sunnydale are filled with sea lions, obviously afraid to stay in the water because of something down below. Add to this the news that every vampire in town (but one) has fled for safer environs. Golden is definitely setting the stage for something special, and in terms of the monsters, I would say he delivers. I am less satisfied with the involvement of the Watcher's Council and Faith in "The Wisdom of War." To be fair, these are certainly two of the most problematic elements in the Buffy Mythos. During this past season the series has definitely become pretty much totally divorced from the Watcher's Council, what with them not noticing that Buffy was dead (although my guess is technically Buffy did not die because Dawn is "her" the same way the Slayer was her sister to close the portal) and with Giles having decided to do his official watching from the other side of the pond. Meanwhile, Faith is sitting in prison and any novel that deals with her has to put her right back there at the end of the tale in the same shape they found her. Golden comes down decidedly on the idea of the Council as the bad guys, although he does boil this down essentially to Quentin Travers. There is really no serious thought of an uneasy alliance here, but Golden does use the presence of the Travers and his operatives in Sunnydale to set the stage for some serious soul searching by the Slayer. So, in the end, there is a worthwhile payoff to their involvement in this affair. As for Faith, well, Golden characterization of the "rouge-but-repentant" Slayer is simply wrong. This Faith is too much the new Slayer in town who showed up in Season 3, happy to do a little butt kicking and calling Buffy "B" all the time. But this does not jive with the two-parter on "Angel" when Faith's self-loathing drove her to try and provoke Angel into killing her. Nor does it fit the conversations between Faith and Buffy in the second half of storyline. When we get to the payoff between the two Slayers in this novel Golden does come up with a very nice little scene between the two of them, but it runs counter to the way Faith had been portrayed throughout the rest of the novel. I think the Faith in need of anger management is long gone; what we last saw was a broken woman who needs to rebuild her psyche from scratch. Golden has a similarly archaic characterization of Willow as well, but he does a nice job on Xander and especially Tara (the latter is the best I have read to date). However, "The Wisdom of War" is still a first-rate "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" novel because in the final analysis neither of the above detailed caveats are central to the main action of the book. Golden's narrative hooks you early on, he keeps building up first the suspense and then the horror, and he delivers at the end. This is not a nice clean fight with vampires but a more traditional type of war with serious casualties, pertinent to the moral lesson Golden wants to make with his narrative.
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